


The cure is worse than … who are we kidding, the cure is GREAT

by unnieunnie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Awkward Flirting, Crushes, Cuteness & romance, M/M, Magical allergy, Minseok makes even tentacles look good, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:21:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27070372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unnieunnie/pseuds/unnieunnie
Summary: Jongdae's allergy is lifelong, annoying, and magical. He's tried every magical solution he could think of, no matter how expensive. The only cure left is one nobody has ever fully explained to him, except that the deep sea is involved in a way that inspires wagging eyebrows and suggestive comments.It's not a thing he ever plans to mention to his colleague, Dr. Kim Minseok, Associate Professor of Otherworldly Mechanics and benthic demon.Oops.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Minseok | Xiumin
Comments: 11
Kudos: 208
Collections: EXO MONSTERFEST 2020





	The cure is worse than … who are we kidding, the cure is GREAT

Pizza was supposed to be safe, Jongdae thought as he lay shirtless on the tile floor of his bathroom, wheezing and pretending that the chill of the floor made his skin itch slightly less. He’d stuck to bland, too-sweet Western food at every work and public event since secondary school, and he’d always been safe.

Who the heck put anchovy on pizza?

Somebody, anyhow, Jongdae thought while he coughed through his itchy, too-tight throat. They could’ve at least had the courtesy to label if it they were going to put _fish_ on _pizza_.

Jongdae scratched a couple of hives, which didn’t help.

He didn’t even really like Western food that much. He preferred a nice, spicy meal from his homeland – provided it didn’t contain fish sauce, dried anchovies, or anchovy broth.

Which is to say, almost every freaking Korean meal in the world not cooked by his own or his mother’s hands.

Jongdae sneezed, and the world flashed blue, then the lights went out. He heard various groans and cries from his neighbors. He rolled over onto his stomach to let the cool floor ease the itch on his chest. He sneezed twice more – just long enough for the lights to flicker on, then off again. It went on like that all night: coughing, itching, sneezing, and the electricity in his building flickering on and off so that nobody got any sleep.

It was _awesome_.

At least the work party had been in the evening. His allergy, being magical, couldn’t be touched by anti-histamines or steroids. It could only be cured by the rising of the next day’s sun.

Ordinarily he would call in sick to catch up on sleep after a night like that, but it was the week before exams, and Jongdae’s students couldn’t do without him. He took a long, cold shower and stopped for an iced coffee large enough to make him float away.

He dragged through his two morning classes and the kids’ nonstop questions about how to tell a van Eyck from a Rembrandt and who painted which half-naked semi-pornographic depiction of St. Sebastian with arrows carefully placed for maximum suggestiveness.

Honestly, they tended to blur together even when Jongdae wasn’t half out of his mind with fatigue.

He had to be _at least_ half out of his mind for it follow to the path it took while he nodded over his vegetable kimbap at lunch.

He knew who Kim Minseok was, of course. Everyone on campus knew Kim Minseok, Associate Professor of Otherworldly Mechanics. For one thing, the number of magical faculty was small; for another, the Otherworldly Mechanics department was famously well-funded by the son of a sea-god who sponsored a yearly internship to the Hell Sea that bridged the living world and the beyond.

For a third, he was insanely good-looking. Given that he was a benthic demon, that “insanely” part was almost literal: his skin was so pale as to be almost grey, but it shone like a pearl in the light, and his large eyes were liquid black with no whites showing, his hair falling in black curls over his wide forehead. Jongdae was so loopy with exhaustion that he thought he heard whalesong just watching Professor Kim spoon soup into his mouth with elegant gestures, one elbow holding a book open.

Demon of the benthic realms. Jongdae chewed his kimbap with the ferocity of the bitterly tired. Lots of anchovies in the deep black sea. He’d tried every magical allergy treatment he’d ever been able to find: unicorn powder, acupuncture with needles that flamed with dragon’s breath. His savings account screamed every time he had another allergy attack. There was only one treatment he’d never been able to try, because it couldn’t be purchased for all the money in the world.

Jongdae lurched upright from a 3-second-long nap, just long enough to dream Professor Kim’s black eyes blinking up at him. Between the caffeine and the exhaustion, the world vibrated around its edges. Jongdae figured he must be hallucinating that he rose from his chair and stepped over to sit across from Professor Kim. What a terrible hallucination, because Professor Kim looked up at him, deep-water eyes round and his full, soft-looking lips pursed. He cocked his head to one side, so that a couple of those tiny curls floated over his forehead.

“I have an allergy,” this terrible hallucination-Jongdae said.

“Do you?” Professor Kim asked in his light tenor voice, frowning.

When Jongdae nodded in his fever dream, the world wriggled in a deeply unpleasant way.

“Anchovies,” he said. “Magical. Nothing helps it.”

Professor Kim’s eyebrows lifted, and then it was as if his face were a door that slammed shut.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he said.

The really terrible thing was that once Professor Kim had very crisply shut his book, placed it in his bag, and left, Jongdae had the sneaking suspicion that it hadn’t been a hallucination at all.

Three afternoon classes, a nap, a vegetable pancake, and a good night’s sleep later, Jongdae was ready to pitch himself into a volcano with horror. He half-expected his supervisor to pull him in for a lecture about making inept, unwelcome passes at coworkers; by the end of exams, Jongdae had bitten all his fingernails off with worry. Every time he caught a glimpse of Professor Kim on campus, Jongdae felt himself cringe into a bow shape.

His mom called, and the thought of the look on her face drove Jongdae out into the night afterward, to the stationery shop down the street from his apartment. He slipped in right before closing and chose the soberest, plainest apology card they had in stock. In for the whole barrel of kimchi, Jongdae walked straight to campus and wrote an apology so earnest and contrite that he probably sounded like an A-plus dork. Which he very clearly was. He sealed the envelope and went to find Professor Kim’s mailbox in the faculty lounge.

Professor Kim was, of course, standing in front of it.

“Oh god!” Jongdae cried out.

Professor Kim hadn’t turned on the lights – as a benthic demon, he probably didn’t need light to see – so most of Jongdae’s problem was getting his soul startled halfway out of him.

“I just wanted to apologize, not look like a damn stalker!” he said, taking care of the rest of his problem.

Being (1) scared almost shitless and (b) super embarrassed, Jongdae took the only path of honor: he shoved the card at Professor Kim and ran away.

Kim Jongdae: super smooth dude, always in control.

Administering exams, then consoling a parade of bereft students who bombed said exams, occupied Jongdae for the next several days, so that he didn’t have time to mope about being too awkward to live in front of Professor Kim. Cooped up in classrooms and then his office, he was entirely free from the danger of running into Professor Kim.

Jongdae figured that by the end of autumn break, he’d be over his mortification. He rarely saw Professor Kim around campus, after all – the Magical Sciences building was across campus from the Arts building.

Which made the following instances very weird:

  * He looked up from the prepared-food bin at his local market to see Professor Kim slipping away from the fish counter
  * Cutting through the park between campus and home, Jongdae passed the koi pond and saw Professor Kim bending down toward the big white koi in the green water, almost like they were having a conversation
  * During an afternoon run, interrupted by a sudden downpour, when Jongdae was hustling miserably home with his hand shielding his eyes, he watched Professor Kim run by across the street, head tipped back to the rain



These were weird, but at least they prepared him for the day classes started back up again and Jongdae watched a grey-pale hand reach around him, black credit card in those long fingers, after he placed his coffee order at the campus café.

“Yarg?” Jongdae said when he turned and stared into Kim Minseok’s hugely black eyes.

“I accept your apology,” Minseok said.

He retrieved his own paper cup from the counter behind Jongdae and walked away.

The view from the back consisted of extremely long legs and a nice little double handful of ass. Jongdae took a long sip of his iced coffee for strength.

Jongdae was glad he hadn’t irredeemably offended Kim Minseok: especially when the university rolled out a new initiative during the fall to forge links between the different schools. Jongdae got to hear from his friend Yixing all about the centaur who chaired Otherwordly Anatomy, who clattered into the Health Sciences building and crushed two desks. Kyungsoo’s Culinary Arts classes were practically taken over by a warren of brownies, but they were so organized and quiet that Soo didn’t even seem to mind and beamed his heart-shaped smile around campus, leaving rafts of love-stricken students, teachers, and staff in his wake.

The Arts Department got a muse.

“Why are you here?” the muse said to Jongdae on their first day. “Shouldn’t an angel be over on my side of campus?”

This was extremely cheesy. Jongdae, however, being composed of about 80% pure processed cheese food, laughed the way that made Junmyeon call him “Donkey Man.” Baekhyun, the muse, blinked twice, giggled, and suddenly Jongdae had a standing daily lunch date. It took about a week for their lunch date to turn into a trio, after Chanyeol worked up the courage to emerge from behind his paint tubes enough to stare at Baekhyun and not eat any of his lunch. It was cute, and Jongdae wished his third-favorite co-worker luck, even if he was slightly afraid Baekhyun would chew Chanyeol to pieces. Poor Channie had a heart as squishy as the stuffed dog toys that lined his office windowsill.

It was fun, both Baekhyun’s company and watching the art students of all disciplines blossom under his influence. He invited friends over – a zephyr, who awed the dance students with his fluid wind-ritual and stripped down for Jongdae’s life-drawing class with a wicked little grin.

“If I’d known you were going to show everybody your dick, I would never have invited you, Hunnie,” Baekhyun grumbled over Jongdae’s sketchbook at drinks later that night.

“You’re just mad because if you model now, everyone’ll be disappointed,” Sehun whistled.

Chanyeol choked on his bourbon-and-coke spectacularly. Jongdae and Baekhyun were both patting him on the back, while Sehun kept telling him to raise his hands above his head, when someone cleared his throat behind him.

“You can’t die, Channie, do you have any idea how much paperwork I have to fill out for the faculty life insurance plan?” Junmyeon said mildly.

Chanyeol dabbed at his streaming eyes and nodded his big, shaggy head. Jongdae tried not to gawp at Kim Minseok standing behind Jun, dressed down in chunky round glasses and tousled hair and frowning at Chanyeol’s distress.

While Jongdae’s blood roared in his ears, he missed the conversation that led to Junmyeon and Minseok joining them at the table. When Minseok sat next to him, Jongdae lost hope of having any coherent thoughts in the foreseeable future.

“Jongdae,” Kim Minseok said to him, with a nod and a smile.

Up close, his teeth looked slightly sharp. Surely it was the surprise of that making Jongdae’s breath bottle itself up high in his chest.

“Yerk,” Jongdae said.

“Oh, you know each other?” Jun asked.

“Only in passing,” Minseok said with a grin in Junmyeon’s direction.

He patted Jongdae’s arm. Jongdae lost 20 years of his life.

“We run into one another in the coffee shop on occasion.”

The conversation flowed around them. Jongdae wondered whether Baekhyun’s presence made the jokes seem funnier, but after a while he forgot to be awkward about Minseok sitting next to him, occasionally brushing his shoulder, laughing.

They got silly after a while, playing a rhythm game around the table with shots as forfeit. Poor Jun was so bad at it, and worse still as he got drunker. He also kept listing Sehunward as he drank.

“Do you think that young zephyr minds?” Minseok murmured in Jongdae’s ear.

Jongdae shivered and tried to cover it up by popping a couple of bar snacks into his mouth.

By the second chew, he realized that he hadn’t paid attention to which bowl he’d grabbed from and that he was consuming shrimp chips. The really cheap-ass kind, which weren’t flavored with dried shrimp, but with anchovy.

“Shit,” he said.

“What’s wrong with your energy?” Sehun said. “It just went all wobbly.”

Jongdae sneezed, and the bar’s lights flickered.

“Uh, dude, you’ve got a - what is that? Are you growing moss on your face?” Baekhyun said.

Jongdae scratched the itchy patch on his face, which was probably the green hive Baek meant. He sneezed again. The lights went out. A cry went up; he sneezed again, and the lights turned back on.

“Oh no, your allergy,” Chanyeol said, and rushed away with all the bar snacks in his hands.

“You actually have an allergy?” Minseok said from behind a mighty frown.

Jongdae heard himself wheeze.

“Sorry,” he croaked. “I gotta go home.”

“Don’t you have one of those stabby tubes?” Sehun asked. “For your leg. Isn’t that a human thing? I knew a human who could die of peanuts. She had a stabby leg tube.”

Jongdae tried to shake his head and sneezed twice instead, making the lights wink off and on, then scratched at a green hive on the back of his hand.

“It’s a magical allergy,” Junmyeon said. “Poor Dae. He just has to suffer through until dawn. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

“I’ll take him,” Minseok said.

“Oh yeah,” Baekhyun drawled. “You’ve got the cure for that kind of thing.”

Jongdae already felt like he was dying, and he didn’t really have enough air to groan, so he coughed in Baek’s direction.

Minseok was extremely still, except for the way his hair kind of seemed to move as if he were underwater. Or maybe Jongdae’s watery eyes just couldn’t focus right, which seemed more likely. Whatever the look was on Minseok’s face, Baekhyun wilted. Chanyeol returned just in time to stare confusedly around at the mixture of abashment and amusement around the table.

Jongdae tried to sneeze and cough at the same time, which was very painful in the sinus region and made him have to bend over to catch his breath while a small bolt of blue lightning arced out from his hand, so that he shocked himself in the stomach.

“Somebody take him home, please,” Chanyeol said.

Jongdae felt Minseok’s hand go around his elbow and let himself be led outside to a small black car with a dark grey interior. Minseok flipped dials as soon as the car started, and cold air blasted out of the vents. The cold made Jongdae itch less, and the breeze against his face made it easier to breathe.

“I know something that might help,” Minseok said.

Jongdae gurgled with horror and blessed the darkness of the car, so Minseok couldn’t see his blush.

“I’m not offering you a cure,” Minseok said in a dry tone.

“Of course not,” Jongdae squeaked.

“But I know a place that might help you, if you like. Or I’ll take you home.”

Jongdae sneezed six times in quick succession.

“If there’s anything that’ll help, I’ll take it,” he said.

He was too bleary to notice the route Minseok took – but given that the University was nowhere near the coast and they parked by a moonlit beach, obviously it hadn’t been a _regular_ road. Jongdae shivered as he stepped from the car: it was odd enough to be in an unexpected place, but the sand was dark and the water a pale, luminous blue in the shallows, and the air smelled cold and slightly metallic. Jongdae hadn’t been to the Otherworld before. He wondered whether he was even seeing the colors correctly. He wondered whether the ringing in his ears was from the place or his allergy.

He sneezed.

Minseok laughed.

“Come with me.”

Minseok guided him with a hand under his elbow again, as they climbed down to the beach.

“I think the water will help you,” Minseok said.

“The what?”

“If you strip down and get into the water. It should ease some of the itch, at least.”

Strip? Down? Water?

Jongdae wasn’t much of a swimmer.

He was pretty desperate, though.

Minseok waved a hand, and the sand moved, flowing into a shape at the water’s edge that looked a bit like a beach chair angled for maximum comfort. Under the light of the huge Otherworldly moon, Minseok looked as if his skin was made of pearl, and his eyes were huge black shadows in his face.

Jongdae didn’t want to get into the water. He didn’t want to take his clothes off in front of Minseok, under these horrible, embarrassing circumstances. But the itch was terrible, and he could feel a wracking cough trying to work its way up from his chest. He started to unbutton his shirt.

Minseok turned away and stared up at the moon, hands clasped behind his back. Jongdae had to grin at it.

“Okay,” he said when he was down to his underwear, hoping that boxer-briefs wouldn’t impede whatever help the Otherworldly ocean might give him.

Minseok kept his chin dipped low so that his face was shadowed as he took Jongdae’s arm again and helped him settle into the sand. The water was cold at first, and it stung fiercely against his hives; Jongdae hissed, and Minseok shushed him, smoothed his hair off his forehead. After the first few waves, the sting eased into a coolness that made the itch bearable. Jongdae lay in the water and tried to breathe calmly. The angle made it hard to sneeze, but after a while he didn’t need to, he just coughed and wheezed, shivered a little at the chill.

Time must’ve been different in the Otherworld, or maybe he dozed a little under that soft stroke of Minseok’s fingers and a half-imagined sound of something moaning in the distance, because it didn’t seem like that long before a greenish sun slipped above the horizon. Jongdae felt his allergy symptoms disappear, and he sighed, sat up.

“Better?” Minseok asked.

The sun’s green light did Minseok no favors. He looked like concrete instead of pearl. But Jongdae couldn’t think of him as anything other than handsome.

“That was amazing,” Jongdae said. “Thank you.”

Minseok nodded and pulled Jongdae to his feet. He hadn’t thought that a benthic demon’s control over things sea-related would extend to helping one magically dry off without getting covered in sand, but it was a huge bonus to ride home without being stuck in damp, scratchy clothes.

At some point there was a barrier between the Otherworld and the world-world, because Jongdae realized that they were back in nighttime, under the pale light of Earth’s moon. His allergy didn’t return, though. And he didn’t remember the barrier. The clock said 12:25 – he’d even have enough time to get some decent sleep before his mid-morning class.

“I didn’t think you actually had an allergy,” Minseok said quietly.

The implications of that were – gross.

“Oh gosh,” Jongdae said.

Minseok laughed.

“I apologize for assuming that.”

“It’s okay,” Jongdae said.

They pulled up outside Jongdae’s building. He was so busy thanking Minseok that it wasn’t until he stumbled upstairs and into his bed that he wondered how Minseok had known where he lived.

It was great to know that he didn’t have to be weird and awkward around Minseok for being a creepy dork. It was less great that Minseok _smiled_ at him all the time, which made Jongdae forget how gravity worked. They kept running into each other at the coffee shop and having these dumb, idle conversations about students and grading and Power Point that resulted in Jongdae having a crush large enough to flatten a house. It was super terrible, in the crush part, and super great, in the whole mooning around about how Minseok was so _mysterious_ and _handsome_ and _nice._

Even better, twice at faculty mixers, Minseok was able to alert Jongdae to the presence of anchovy in innocent-seeming dishes. On one hand, a bummer not to spend another romantic night on an Otherworld beach wheezing and scratching. On the other hand, see above, re: no wheezing and scratching.

Pretty good times. The Otherworld faculty program ended, but the little friend group they’d made kept meeting for drinks and clustering together at University events. Jongdae was especially eager for the Winter Solstice party, which was semi-formal: both because he knew Chanyeol was working himself up to asking Baekhyun out finally, and because he was pretty excited to see Minseok in a suit.

Jongdae took care with his own look for the party, for once. He let Junmyeon lend him a suit – grey windowpane plaid, with super skinny trousers. He let Baekhyun pick his shirt, which was a dark green turtleneck, sparing him the discomfort of a tie. He styled his hair up off his face and wore his contacts.

Minseok was in midnight blue and black, his suit with the tiniest hint of sheen to it, and a large grey pearl hung from one ear. Jongdae sighed with happiness, right up to the point when an extremely pretty man in shiny sea green sidled up next to Minseok, put an arm around his waist, and kissed Minseok’s neck.

All those paintings of Saint Sebastian punctured by a dozen arrows that Jongdae’s students couldn’t keep straight suddenly seemed really relatable.

Minseok looked over and caught Jongdae’s eye. His lips thinned. Jongdae plastered a fake smile over his disappointment and approached them.

“Wah, who put a curse on you?” Sea-Green Suit said. “Poor baby, what is it you can’t eat, clams? Tuna?”

“Anchovies,” Jongdae blurted from sheer surprise.

“Yikes, what a pain,” the man said. “Let me take a look at you.”

He grasped Jongdae’s chin and angled it up. His eyes were the same color as the water at the Otherworld beach had been, and something in them seemed to ebb and flow like waves, until Jongdae felt dizzy.

“Your mama pissed off a sea witch,” the man said. “That hardly seems fair to you. Want me to fix you, baby?”

He leaned in close, until Jongdae could smell a scent of salt wind and ozone.

“It’d be real fun for both of us.”

“No,” Minseok growled.

The depth and roughness of his voice pulled Jongdae from his fugue; he stepped back out of the man’s grasp. The man grinned.

“No, Minnie?” the man laughed.

“No.”

Minseok’s hair was doing that thing where it moved as if it were underwater, and his teeth looked sharp again.

The man put his hands in his pockets and grinned.

“Aw, Minmin, you know I’m too lenient with you. But whatever,” he shrugged.

He turned back to Jongdae and grinned.

“You ever want to get this curse off you, sweetheart, stand in the surf at low tide and call out my name. I’d be happy to fill you up with something better.”

“I don’t know – “ Jongdae said, then shut his mouth with a snap.

The man’s grin went wider and a little scary.

“I’m Luhan, baby,” he said. “God of the Western Sea.”

He chucked Jongdae under the chin, kissed Minseok’s cheek, and sauntered off in the direction of the University administrators. Jongdae tried to sort all the pieces of the world back into their proper places.

Minseok glared with visible teeth at the room in general for a minute or so, then sighed heavily, and his shoulders drooped.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“Jeez,” Jongdae said, “I don’t think I can blame you for anything an actual freaking god says.”

Minseok wrinkled his nose, then rubbed it.

“Thanks.”

They wandered to the food tables, and Jongdae let Minseok fuss over him, piling a tiny plate full of tiny, non-anchovy-containing foods. Minseok seemed out of sorts, and Jongdae felt vaguely invaded, so the coddling was nice. They found a table by the edge of the room and watched Chanyeol orbit Baekhyun like a large, slow moon. Jongdae finished his tiny plate and handed it to one of Kyungsoo’s brownies, who whisked it away. Kyungsoo himself was actually visible in the doorway to the kitchen, blushing in the general direction of a member of the dance faculty.

“Hey, Minseok,” he said. “Is that guy one of yours?”

Minseok looked over to where Jongdae pointed.

“Jongin? No, he’s human, just blessed with good bone structure.”

Damn, he’d lost 20,000 won in that betting pool.

“Jongdae,” Minseok said.

Jongdae looked up, but Minseok was gazing at the tablecloth, and his one visible hand was clenched into a fist.

He waited.

“Jongdae, Luhan will happily relieve you of your allergy if you wish it. I can. Call him back, if you want.”

Minseok looked up at him then, his large, all-black eyes blinking slowly.

“Not many humans would turn down the offer of sex with a god,” he said.

Jongdae looked over at Luhan, currently leaning far into the personal space of the Dean of Student Affairs, who seemed both terrified and thrilled.

“Okay, but he’s kind of sleazy and scary, right?” Jongdae whispered behind a cupped hand, in case gods had really great hearing.

Minseok blinked at him some more, then laughed. He reached out and laid his hand on Jongdae’s arm. Jongdae patted it, and found Minseok’s skin to be cool and soft.

“He is!” Minseok giggled. “Oh, depths, Jongdae. Thank you, I needed that.”

“Okay,” Jongdae said, and patted Minseok’s hand again.

He didn’t know what it was Minseok needed, but hey. Jongdae would pretty much try to climb into the sky and fetch down a cloud if Minseok asked.

Minseok looked at their hands, and his expression went quiet.

“I keep waiting for you to ask me to help you,” he said softly.

Jongdae pulled his hand away. Minseok nodded, and lifted his hand from Jongdae’s arm. Awkward.

“I don’t want to take advantage,” Jongdae said.

Minseok frowned at him, which reached into Jongdae’s mind and hit the babble button.

“I mean, I don’t know exactly how it works,” he said. “Like, you seemed really offended when I brought it up the first time we talked, my god, I was so rude! All I really know about it is dumb rumors and stuff from when I got my dragon’s-breath acupuncture and the place where I did the phoenix sweat-bath, when they didn’t work the people were like ‘oh you should try tentacle treatment’ but they couldn’t tell me what that meant, and you obviously don’t have any tentacles hiding under that suit, surely they’d show, but also, like, I don’t want to make you mad at me, you’re super great, and you took me all the way to the dang Otherworld just to make me feel better, and you’re so nice to always point out what I shouldn’t eat, that’s the same thing as curing me, right? If I’m not having an attack it’s just the same, I just like spending time with you, I wouldn’t ever want – “

“Jongdae.”

Jongdae quit talking and caught up on his breathing. He couldn’t tell what Minseok’s expression meant, but it made him feel a little unstable in his chair. Minseok’s hair was waving around again.

“Did you understand what Luhan meant when he said he could take the curse off you?”

Jongdae’s face went hot.

“Well yeah, he wasn’t exactly subtle.”

“That is what it would take for me to help you,” Minseok said.

Jongdae stared into Minseok’s black eyes and wondered whether it was possible to drown in them.

“What?”

“You would have to see me as I really am, Jongdae. And I have hesitated to offer it, in case you don’t like what you see.”

“Not like?” Jongdae squeaked. “How could I not? Like? Minseok, you’re gorgeous.”

The twist of Minseok’s mouth was wry.

“What do you think about having this conversation anywhere else but here?”

“Please.”

They snuck out by sticking to the edges of the room. Outside the banquet hall, Minseok held Jongdae’s wrist while they waited for Minseok’s car.

“Your place?”

Jongdae nodded. The drive to his apartment was quiet and tense. Minseok’s head hung over the steering wheel briefly after he turned the car off; then he sighed heavily and shook himself. He turned down offers of tea, water, and liquor when they were inside, and settled himself gingerly on the edge of Jongdae’s couch by the dim light of one lamp.

“I would like to kiss you,” he said.

“Well jeez, is that all? Go ahead,” Jongdae’s giddiness said for him.

Minseok rolled his eyes, but he curved one hand softly over Jongdae’s cheek and leaned in. His full lips were cool and gentle against Jongdae’s own at first; when Jongdae grasped his wrist and leaned in for more, Minseok laughed once in the back of his throat, then opened his mouth and kissed Jongdae until Jongdae didn’t even know how to stay upright anymore.

“Don’t stop,” Jongdae said when Minseok leaned back.

Minseok grinned.

“You’re so appealing,” he said, his thumb stroking Jongdae’s cheek. “I’m happy to have this to remember, if there’s nothing else.”

Jongdae turned his head and gently bit the base of Minseok’s thumb.

“You can definitely kiss me again, don’t be ridiculous.”

Instead of doing so, Minseok stood up and took off his clothes. Shock was the only thing that kept Jongdae from sitting up straight and clapping his hands.

“No tentacles in sight,” Jongdae said. “Even if you stretched the definition, that looks like a perfectly normal cock to me.”

And all that lovely pearl-grey skin stretched over well-defined muscles. Jongdae thought he could stare forever, except for the part where it would be even better to touch.

“That’s real,” Minseok said. “But Jongdae – “

It was like the barrier between the Otherworld dawn and the world-world night: one second Minseok had a smooth, sculpted abdomen, and the next he had a clump of a dozen or so waving tentacles between his pelvis and his chest. Jongdae didn’t remember seeing them grow or reveal themselves: they were just there. They were the same pale grey as the rest of his skin, thick as his cock at the base but each of them tapered, waving like his hair was doing, like seaweed in a current.

It was a bit weird, for sure. But when measured against the memory of Minseok’s hand stroking his head while he lay in the Otherworldly sea, and the more recent memory of Minseok’s mouth moving against his own, Jongdae couldn’t work up a fuss about it. Tentacles were better than bad breath.

“Are they prehensile?” the pervy part of his brain asked.

Jongdae congratulated the pervy part of his brain for its excellent priorities.

Minseok made a brief little smile that Jongdae thought looked kind of nervous, and he laughed once.

“You don’t mind?”

It was hard to see Kim Minseok looking unsure about himself.

“I don’t mind,” Jongdae said. “Is there more?”

Minseok shook his head, fists clenched, hair and tentacles both whipping like a cat’s tail.

“Come on,” Jongdae said. “Let’s see it. I promise not to scream like a kindergartner.”

Minseok glared at him briefly, and then his eyes were bigger, his nose flatter, with teeth too long to fit inside his mouth and a frill of gills around his neck.

That was … a little more challenging.

Minseok shook his head again, and his face went back to what Jongdae was used to.

“I can’t kiss you like that,” Minseok said.

“Yeah, no, I’d like to keep my tongue in one piece, if we’re gonna do this thing.”

Benthic demons could apparently move really fast, because Jongdae found himself on his back on the couch with a lot of naked Minseok on top of him pretty much as soon as that was out of his mouth. With a lot of Minseok’s tongue preventing him from saying anything else for a minute.

“Are we doing this thing?” Minseok whispered, lips against the sensitive spot under Jongdae’s ear.

“Please,” Jongdae said.

He tilted his pelvis up for emphasis, and whatever brushed against it was too pliable to be Minseok’s cock, rubbing against him in a way that argued strongly in favor of being open-minded.

Minseok licked slowly up the side of Jongdae’s neck and gave a low, dirty laugh at the sound Jongdae made. Jongdae reached up to pull Minseok’s mouth to his own, kissed him until they clutched at each other.

“Jongdae,” Minseok said. “Please. I swear I’ll cure your allergy, but please, let me first –“

“Yes,” Jongdae said. “Please let’s first.”

Poor Junmyeon’s suit – it got thoroughly crumpled in the removal process. The way Minseok wrapped both hands around his waist and kissed slowly up his belly and chest while removing that green turtleneck drove any remaining trepidation about those tentacles out of Jongdae’s mind. They were like Minseok’s skin, cool until they warmed against him, and then it was just sensation, Minseok’s mouth against his, Minseok’s hands on his chest, Minseok’s – other bits – moving against his abdomen, the front of his shorts.

Minseok broke their kiss and dipped his head against Jongdae’s neck with a gasp.

“What’s going on?” Jongdae asked.

“Opening myself up for you,” Minseok said with a hitch.

Jongdae’s breath blew out of him all in one rush.

Minseok sat up and tossed his head; Jongdae saw that two of the tentacles had lengthened ( _whaaaaat_ ) and were wrapped around the back of Minseok’s waist, out of sight.

Jongdae figured his dick hadn’t been this hard since he was 13 years old at the implications of not only “opening myself up for you” but also tentacles that could apparently _grow_ and move around and do whatever they were doing that made Minseok’s eyes fly open wide and Minseok’s teeth sink into his own bottom lip while Jongdae shimmied out of his underwear.

“Can I?” Minseok breathed.

“Fuck yes,” Jongdae said, and Minseok sank down onto him so they both groaned aloud.

And if he’d thought about it beforehand, which he absolutely had thought about a number of times of the previous few months, in his shower, hunched up around his pillow trying to jack himself and get a couple fingers in his ass without giving himself a back spasm. In none of these highly enjoyable scenarios had he been the one doing the fucking.

Holy shit. Minseok’s body was so damn tight around him, warm and slick and, uh. Bare.

It must’ve shown on Jongdae’s face, because Minseok shook his head, and his hair whipped around. He licked his lips and pressed the heel of one hand into Jongdae’s chest.

“I should’ve told you,” he said in a low growl, “I’m not subject to any human diseases. Jongdae.”

His hips made small, restless movements that felt delicious enough that Jongdae whimpered.

“Sorry,” Minseok said. “Should’ve – ah – said something, I just.”

He moved again, and Jongdae’s pelvis snapped upward in response of its own accord. The two long tentacles wrapped around Jongdae’s upper arms, and Jongdae felt the muscles of Minseok’s thighs shift under his hands.

“It’s okay,” he rasped.

“No.”

Minseok shoved back and forth, slow and hard.

“Should’ve said. You’re just. Jongdae.”

He looked so good, with his neck arched back, and Jongdae couldn’t even be bothered by the nest of non-standard appendages. They simply looked like part of Minseok. Minseok ducked his head and grinned.

“You think you have a poker face,” he said, voice deep. “You have no idea how obvious you’ve been.”

Jongdae might’ve worried about that, except that Minseok rose up and dropped down, then leaned in close.

“I kept waiting for you to kiss me, you ridiculous man.”

So Jongdae did; by the end of that, he didn’t know where he was being touched by hands and where by tentacles, but all of it felt so good that he didn’t care. Minseok moved against him. Two more tentacles circled his wrists and pushed his arms up above his head. Minseok grinned down, fierce and hungry. He nosed up under Jongdae’s chin. Jongdae arched up, tilted his head back, and let the pleasure of it flow over him like a wave.

“You should come,” Minseok murmured, lips against his shoulder.

Minseok was touching him everywhere – it was definitely in the realm of possibility.

“Should I?” he said, and it sounded like a gasp.

Minseok moved harder, but still slow.

“You should,” he said. “It’ll make my curing you even better.”

His eyes were like the night sea, black and deep enough to drown in, but they glittered so beautifully.

“Faster,” Jongdae said. “Just for a second. And I will.”

Minseok held him while he came down, so many limbs wrapped around him that Jongdae felt safer than he knew was possible. One tentacle stroked the side of his face, and Minseok’s lips were sweet and soft against his mouth.

“What does it take?” Jongdae asked when he’d caught his breath. “Does it hurt? Is that why you wanted me to?”

“Only if I’m doing it wrong,” Minseok said, and kissed Jongdae again. “But most of my human partners find my body strange.”

Jongdae reached down and grabbed one of the tentacles at the base: it was warm and slick, and it pulsed when Jongdae squeezed it. When he drew his hand along the length of it, Minseok’s eyes closed briefly, and he shuddered, then kissed Jongdae hard enough to steal his breath.

“Slippery,” Jongdae said.

“Lick your fingers.”

Minseok was watching him with an intent stillness, so Jongdae made a show of it, lifting his fingers slowly to his mouth and sliding his tongue out for show. The fluid tasted of salt, with just enough vague sweetness underneath to give it savor. Under Minseok’s hungry gaze, Jongdae licked his hand clean.

“You could do that daily for two turns of the moon and achieve a cure that would last a year,” Minseok said.

But the lift of his eyebrow was a challenge. Jongdae snuggled up close against him, and the tentacles weren’t the only things that twitched.

“What does it take to be permanent?”

“I don’t know about permanence,” Minseok said. “But I am of the sea, and my protection will keep you safe for the long term, if you can allow me to have you.”

“I think I can manage it,” Jongdae said, with a grin.

The tip of something warm touched the corner of his lip.

“Are you sure?”

Jongdae opened his mouth. He licked the tip of tentacle that slipped in, tasting that same flavor, running his tongue along it as if Minseok were kissing him. Minseok made a low sound in the back of his throat. Jongdae opened his mouth wider, and it was filled not quite enough to make him choke.

He took it.

When another brushed against the inside of his thigh, Jongdae let his legs drop open. He tilted his hips up at the bare touch against his ass. That pointed, slick tip slid into him easy as the sigh Minseok made. It took a minute for Jongdae to realize that the tentacle was slowly expanding inside him. He froze and looked up into Minseok’s crooked grin.

The tentacle in his ass pulsed, and Jongdae tipped his chin back to take in more of the one in his mouth. He sucked it hard.

“You like it,” Minseok whispered, as if he could hardly believe it.

Jongdae’s mouth was too full for talking, but he hoped his groan got the point across. Minseok inhaled, and the organ in his mouth withdrew. Jongdae felt it curl around his neck while Minseok kissed him. He felt another wind around his cock.

“You like it,” Minseok repeated, lips against Jongdae’s ear.

Jongdae put one hand in Minseok’s cool hair.

“I like you,” he said. “All these extra bits are just part of the hella sexy, friendly deep-sea demon I’ve liked for months. They’re just a bonus.”

Minseok looked at him, and the frown on his face was so fake that Jongdae leaned up to nip his chin.

“A bonus, eh?”

Jongdae felt the tentacle in his ass pulse and expand again.

“Definitely a bonus.”

When Minseok kissed him again, it was apparently with an intent to overwhelm: Jongdae felt like he was being touched by fifty hands at once, wrapped over and around him, teasing all his most sensitive places while holding him safe and close, stroking him until he begged for it.

“I can’t fuck you, Jongdae, it has to be this,” Minseok said. “And in your mouth, for it to work.”

Jongdae may have been an art-history nerd prone to falling over his own feet in the presence of cute guys, but he’d had his share of adventures.

“Give me both,” he said.

The tentacle inside him stopped stroking his prostate (bummer), and Minseok stared at him with eyes so huge and black that they looked like the night sky.

“What?”

“I can take it,” Jongdae said. “Just go slow.”

He wriggled and stroked the long, slick limb wrapped around his chest, flicking at one nipple.

“Come on, Min,” he said.

Minseok’s smile was a little too broad for a human face, but how was Jongdae supposed to care, feeling the way he stretched wider, then wider still? Minseok’s mouth was on him, all those limbs, one of them wrapped around his cock, still except for a slow, crazy-making pulse.

“Fuck,” Jongdae said.

“Soon,” Minseok said, and stretched Jongdae a little bit more.

Minseok went as slowly as Jongdae asked, all of it time that Jongdae would remember afterward as a flood of sensation and eagerness, his own reflection in Minseok’s dark eyes. Jongdae made himself breath and relax into it, so full up it was like his lungs couldn’t expand all the way, until Minseok withdrew the second tentacle Jongdae didn’t know had been working him open, and his breath was long and shuddering, with a little whine to it.

Minseok smiled, kissed him softly. Took Jongdae’s breath away from him again by filling him up completely. The words Minseok said weren’t in any human language, and the veins in his neck stood out as he tossed his head.

“Give me a second,” Jongdae panted.

Minseok held himself still, except for the tentacles that stroked his sides and his chest, and the one that teased at his bottom lip.

Jongdae breathed around it until it wasn’t enough. He licked the tentacle touching his mouth.

“Go,” he said, and opened his mouth.

There was so much going on that Jongdae couldn’t even focus on what felt best. Some part of Minseok was touching all of him, and Jongdae could only let it happen, let himself be filled and stroked, held up by all those now-warm, wriggling limbs, falling upward into the salt flavor of him and the black of Minseok’s eyes until all that sensation coalesced into one narrow point of light and Minseok’s shout.

“How beautiful you are,” Minseok said when Jongdae nuzzled against his shoulder and looked up.

Ridiculous, given that Jongdae was looking into the most gorgeous face he could imagine.

“If I’m not cured, we definitely have to try that again,” he said.

Minseok blinked at him twice, then laughed with his eyes crinkled up and his smile broad and crooked.

“You’re cured,” he said. “I can see my magic on you.”

“Oh.”

Jongdae reached up to trace the lovely curve of Minseok’s face, down his neck and chest, until the tentacle he grasped wound around his hand.

“We can still try that again, though, right?”

The limb squeezed his arm, and Minseok laughed again.

“Any time you want.”

First, of course, Jongdae was covered in an array of human and demonic bodily substances that got pretty sticky as they dried. And once he was clean, rest was required, especially given the opportunity to have a nap in the arms of an extremely hot benthic demon.

Minseok was still there when he woke up. Jongdae thought his face might break from smiling so much.

It was winter break, so they got to act like mushy lovebirds from a romance drama, wandering around holding hands, taking selfies by all the Christmas trees, and warming up chilly art history professors in front of the extremely swanky fireplace of one unfairly fancy deep-sea demon at his apartment barely three blocks away from Jongdae’s. After about the third time he got tentacle-fucked (a fun variation on the usual way), Jongdae felt brave enough to take a risk.

“Oh my god,” he moaned over the spoonful of spicy seafood stew. “Oh my god, even if I’m still allergic, I’m eating every bite of this.”

He was not allergic – but apparently his enthusiasm was sexy, because he got the life half kissed out of him in the alley outside the restaurant.

After that they made a grand tour of every seafood restaurant they could find. They did a weekend taste-testing of every cheapo fake shrimp-, crab-, and octopus-flavored snack and ruined their complexions from all the salt. Jongdae learned a tidy new way to fold his socks, and Minseok learned Jongdae’s grandmother’s recipe for roasted pollack. By the time they returned to campus, Jongdae figured he might break out into hives again, this time from having to be apart from Minseok for more than half a day.

“I’m going to carry you away to the bottom of the sea,” Minseok said after classes on Friday of the first week.

He didn’t always bring out the tentacles, but he did so now, until Jongdae was wrapped up like a corn dog. Without the benefit of being impaled on something, but Jongdae figured he’d get that later. In the meantime, he wriggled into all the limbs holding him and hummed.

“As long as you’ll protect me from sharks,” he said.

“No shark would dare even look at you,” Minseok said, nosing up under Jongdae’s ear.

“And Luhan.”

Minseok glared at him.

“Is there good wifi on the ocean floor?”

“You’re impossible.”

Impossible to resist, apparently, given the following hour or so.

They were too busy kissing to do anything sensible like talk about expectations or relationship boundaries. With classes on top of it, Jongdae had no time to worry about that other than the odd moment when he was grading papers or awake in the middle of the night watching Minseok’s hair wave slowly in his sleep.

“I’d like to take you somewhere,” Minseok said to him a month into the new semester.

He looked so serious that Jongdae’s belly seized up briefly, but Min followed it up with a brief, soft kiss.

The second time driving to the Otherworld was the same as the first: one minute they were in a bright winter afternoon; the next, it was nighttime, and Jongdae had no memory of the transition. As they had before, they drove to the beach.

Jongdae could appreciate it better, unbothered by his allergy. The Otherworldly moon hung full in the sky, low and so enormous that it was nearly as bright as daytime. The glowing blue water splashed against dark sand. It was beautiful – but Minseok, under the light of his home, was more beautiful still.

They took off their shoes and walked hand in hand through the surf for a while, until Minseok stopped and pulled off his sweater. His pearly skin shone in the moonlight, and he sighed toward the sky as his tentacles emerged. Jongdae tried to imagine how anyone could think him strange or ugly. He looked like himself, powerful and uncanny, and Jongdae didn’t know anyone he would rather look at.

Minseok took his hand.

“It’s too early to tell you I love you,” he said.

Under that moon and Minseok’s liquid gaze, Jongdae couldn’t make the snappy remark he might usually. He gripped Min’s hand tighter instead, and felt Minseok’s thumb stroke his hand.

“But Jongdae. I want to be with you. I want to see what becomes of us, together. Whether this thing between us is something that will last.”

“Oh,” Jongdae breathed.

Was there any question? Sure, he was going to have to put up with Baekhyun’s infinite teasing and probably be threatened by everyone he knew not to break Minseok’s heart. Maybe his parents would be a little weirded out for him to date a nearly-immortal inhuman being.

But no. There wasn’t any question.

“Of course,” he said. “Of course, Min, let’s try it.”

The whole thing was so romantic that it called for kissing, and Minseok was half-naked anyway, they were pretty much obligated to do it on the beach. Especially since Minseok’s magic ensured that no sand got into unhappy places. And then, since they were already in the Otherworld, it seemed like a shame not to take advantage of the fact that Min could breathe underwater, so they rolled up to campus the next morning feeling like it had been 2 days away, in the same clothes, grinning like dumbasses and yawning but each wearing a ring shaped by Minseok out of pearls that he sang up out of the Otherworld sea.

Baekhyun saw them first. So yeah, infinite teasing. Half the students in Jongdae’s classes wouldn’t stop laughing, which he discovered at lunch was because of a length of neon-yellow seaweed caught in his hair. But he looked across the table at his yawning boyfriend. He took a bite of his fish soup. He reminded himself to send his mom a thank-you note for pissing off that witch, all those years ago.


End file.
